During the two year investigation into The Pirate Bay, several people connected to the site were questioned. The Swedish police allegedly used some of the harshest (Jack Bauer like) interrogation tactics to get them to talk, with surprising results.

When The Pirate Bay was raided back in 2006, three men were brought in for questioning, and the interrogations continued in the months that followed. The police’s goal was obviously to let the people behind the site confess to something they didn’t do. This led to a series of the most hilarious interrogation transcripts I’ve ever read.

Not surprisingly, “the confessions” of the Pirate Bay three didn’t help the police much. Earlier this week, the Swedish prosecutor HÃ¥kan Roswall charged four individuals involved with The Pirate Bay for “assisting copyright infringement”. Actually, this is a surprisingly mild accusation if you consider that he called the Pirate Bay “terrorists” only a few months ago. The response of Brokep’s lawyer sums it up quite nicely: “My client will plead not guilty, but i’m not sure if what he’s being charged with, is a crime at all,” he said.

Below you can read some of the transcripts of the interrogations of Brokep, Anakata and TiAMO, translated from a Swedish article published by IDG.se. (thanks Jens and Billy)

Brokep

I: Interrogator
B: Brokep (Peter Sunde)

I: You are under suspicion of assisting copyright infringement between 2005-07-01 – 2006-05-31 by running and maintaining The Pirate Bay, and thereby assisting in other peoples’ copyright infringement. Another accusation is conspiracy to commit copyright infringement during the same period of time. This has been done through The Pirate Bay where a large amount of so called torrents of copyrighted files or content are made available. It’s customary to ask the person being interrogated if he admits or denies committing a crime?

B: I deny.

I: You deny.

B: Definitely!

I: Yes. And this thing with The Pirate Bay. I don’t know your position on anything about what you have been accused of, but I say you are one of the people who run this site, The Pirate Bay. What do you say about that?

B: I have no comment.

I: Why not?

B: I don’t want to make a statement about it.

I: What do you want to make a statement about?

B: I’ll probably not make statements about very much.

I: Okay. Then what are we doing here?

B: Well it was you who wanted to (not recognizable, laugh) interrogate me.

I: Yes, because you have the opportunity to explain you ideological position.

B: But I think…

I: ..the purpose of The Pirate Bay etc.

B: Oh, well I don’t think my ideology has anything to do with an interrogation. My ideology and my views on things are… Well it’s my political opinion and I can keep that to myself.

I: Okay. During last year, or maybe it was this year, there was an interview in the Hot chair at IDG where you talked openly about The Pirate Bay’s operation. Have you got any comments on..(interrupted)

A: No! No comment.

I: Is it correct that you where in this..(interrupted)

A: No comment!

I: …interview. Okay.

I: We have been talking about this nickname Anakata, and we still claim that is you.

A: No comment!

I: You don’t want to comment on that either. Okay, then lets move on and make this effective instead!
[…]

TiAMO

I: Interrogator
T: TiAMO (Fredrik Neij)

I: This has been a police investigation for a long time. The prosecutor’s case is one of copyright infringement, assisting in copyright infringement and conspiracy to commit copyright infringement. What is your position on this?

T: That he is wrong. That if we are guilty, then Google is guilty too.

I: You mean you can compare Google to The Pirate Bay?

T: Almost.

I: What the difference between them?

T: Well… One difference is that you can upload torrents on The Pirate Bay, but it’s really the same thing because if you have a site with copyrighted material, you can add the link to be indexed on Google. It’s the same level as both sites are handling user-generated material. We don’t have any views on what the content is, we just provide a search engine.

I: But these torrents.. Uhm.. I don’t know what it is in plural (ED: The word “torrent” sounds weird in plural in Swedish)

T: Files of meta data..

I: Yes, I know but what… torrents. If we talk about torrents as more than one, they actually end up on The Pirate Bay’s servers. That’s different to Google?

T: But in the same way it’s… we have a torrent file that is a reference to the material. Someone who only uses a meta link and doesn’t host the file but the file is still available on the filesharing network. Should that be less illegal or more legal? Just because you store the binary data for the hash file locally on a server?

I: But that’s more than Google provides. They only provide a link in that case. While a user or a specific computer in another network provides with the actual… meta data. That has nothing to do with…

T: But then you had to decide whether meta data in itself is illegal or not.

I: But surely it’s not!

T: No.

I: I don’t believe so either, but the summary I mentioned, assisting to commit a crime, that is supplying or owning certain things that can be used for a crime. In this case, it’s providing a tracker, providing a collection of torrent files, you have… It’s about a search engine and so on. That’s more than Google does?

T: Yes

I: And furthermore there was a change of legislation July 1 2005, which means the copyright law has been made tougher than before. I don’t know if you are familiar with the mp3 trial that many refer to in this context, that it is not permitted to link to copyrighted material?

T: Yes.

I: That sentence may be obsolete now, it’s not relevant anymore since the legislation has changed. That’s the foundation of the crime we investigate today. So this thing with Google, it isn’t quite the same thing.

T: I still don’t believe the way we have interpreted it, and we have consulted law people on this. They say that torrent files are not illegal and providing them is not illegal. Since we haven’t actively encouraged the users to upload copyrighted movies and not (not recognizable). We haven’t said anything. We have created an empty site where the only condition was that you cannot upload something where content doesn’t match the description, or if it blatantly is criminal in Sweden.

I: But at the same time, you ridicule Microsoft etcetera on another page of The Pirate Bay?

T: That’s because they try to apply US laws to Sweden.

I: Yes, but what they are really doing is making you aware that there is copyright infringing content on the site.

T: Yes.

I: It comes as no surprise to you that such content is available there?

T: No..

I: So you are not unaware that there is copyright infringing content, but still you chose to remain passive and not remove it?

T: There are links to copyrighted content!

I: Yes exactly, there are links to copyrighted content!

T: Yes.

I: And you are aware of this?

T: We have always had the policy not to interfere with the content on the site.

I: Ok.

T: Since the site was created by PiratbyrÃ¥n, who stand for free speech and freedom to share without some bully trying to interfere, the policy (not recognizable)

I: That’s what we have left here (not recognizable). You say yourself that PiratbyrÃ¥n is not a part of it anymore and that the ideological thing has faded during later years?

T: Yes, but I believe Gottfrid for example is ideologically in line with PiratbyrÃ¥n. Peter as well.

I: And you aren’t?

T: I agree with much of what they say, but it’s not like I would go out on a cold rainy autumn day and protest with a sign against something (not recognizable)